Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

BROKEN ARM, #2

bill writes over there of the visit on last thursday. on friday night, i fell again. spent the entire weekend TOTALLY in bed, drugged up (yet in even greater pain), pissed off (yet feeling terrifically sorry for myself. take it from me -- pissed off feels better). finally got in to see doc today (my fault -- not the doc's). more xrays -- all up and down the arm. sprained wrist and broke the same shoulder bone much worse. i said NO to surgery again cuz my left side doesn't work right anyway, and the skills they'd be hoping to maintain are not possible for me anyway.

pfffft. scooter came friday. bill will break it in for me. i'm hoping by labor fricking day i'll be on it. double pfffft.

and OH YEAH -- IT'S OFFICIAL -- MATTY IS NOW PHD CANDIDATE MATTY BOY.

It Doesn't Work -- That's Why It's Called a Broken Arm

The waiting room at the orthopaedic surgeon's office, in which I am waiting, is pretty cold. Funeral homes are cold, and this waiting room is on par with that. I'm sitting under the wide screen TV tuned to the Food Network.

One guy has a cast on his wrist. There's a multi-colored hair, teenaged girl sitting by herself on the couch to my right reading a Harry Potter book -- her mother has come in and gone outside several times for phone calls. Cellular phones are prohibited. That's what the sign claims, mounted on the window just to the right of the rude receptionist. She has no visible abnormalities -- the girl with the multi-colored hair, that is. The mother might be Borg, for all I know, with a device surgically implanted in the side of her head that allows her to communicate with that sweaty-faced woman who is the chief Borg, who if she had been on Star Trek when Kirk was around, you can be sure Kirk would have bedded her, detachable body or not.

There are two chairs across from me. Kevin, who was just called and taken away by the smallish, stern woman wearing a blue smock, had been sprawled across both chairs, making himself too comfortable. His father, wearing his camouflage "Fishing is Fun" logo baseball cap and Caballa's t-shirt, is reading Guns & Ammo magazine. When he says something to Kevin, he doesn't look up. Nothing apparent is wrong with Kevin -- no cast, immobilizer, sling, or other indications of orthopedic surgery.

I'm puzzled. I'm not a fisherman; so, I don't rightly understand the significance of the camo hat, but there must be some reasonable explanation for it -- he tries to catch flying fish. That must be the reason.

Stacey needed to produce a photo I.D. when she checked in with the rude, bespectacled receptionist. I suppose they want to verify she is who she claims to be and not some other woman with a broken arm, who has taken her place.

Stacey has been wondering why her arm still hurts. I've told her time and again that, and I've been scolded and called a dumbass, with which label I can't argue, for doing so, "Of course it hurts. You have a broken arm."

When she came out of where they had her sequestered, she said she asked the orthopedic surgeon if it was normal for her to be in such pain. I know that the drugs were clouding her mind because under normal circumstances, she would have never admitted that: "He said it's normal because I have a broken bone, that broken bones hurt."

Oreos

What's with Oreos? I bought Double Stuff Oreos for the first time in a long time.

What was the criticism of the old packaging? In the new configuration, there is no paper end to open; and the cookies are in a plastic tray instead of in brown paper-like dividers. Why change?

It is well-nigh impossible to open the heavy, dense, secret polymer package without something sharp to cut or stab at it. Try to open the new package by hand, and if you are successful, the cookies are all over the floor, hard plastic container holding the cookies or not.

And if you are tempted to pull the hard plastic shell holding the new incarnation of Oreos, without "trans-fat," whatever that is, and another step removed from one of the original Oreo filling ingredients, lard, out of the heavy, dense, secret polymer package, you will never be able to put the container back into the package and will obligate you then to eat all of them at one sitting or let them go stale.

The package can frighten a person of normal sensibilities. Sharp instruments can slip any time they slice open a shiny, slick, polymer package, and severe lacerations are normally the result.

I'm sure that the new package costs Nabisco more than the old one. Or is that the answer? Were the Oreos made at a new plant? Outsourced to a country with cheaper labor?

MY SCOOTER

will be here sometime next week. a birthday present from bill. here's a picture. mine's orange.

i'm so pissed i won't be able to ride it for a while. but i DO have a who sticker for it.

Scooter Time

My buddy, Mick, volunteered to pick up me and my inoperable motor scooter and take it and me over to Dave's house so that Dave could help me fix it and get it running once again. My neighbor, Paulius, who owns and operates the Velvet Tango Room, which, if you have not visited, you have missed an enjoyable evening with a wonderful and gracious host, has urged me to get it repaired and on the road. He has about a zillion miles on the scooter he got in the spring and knows what I'm missing.

Yesterday was the day we had decided upon to get together to fix the scooter. Now, you may be wondering and asking yourselves, "Doesn't he know how to fix the thing? After all, he bought it. He should know how to fix it."

Need I really remind you that your writer is the guy who nearly electrocuted himself with Christmas tree lights and caused the most recent Great Blackout when he plugged a heating element into the electric stove to see if it would work, a bright blue bolt of lightning flying over his shoulder and nearly killing him and the several unsuspecting people in the room? Shortly thereafter, electricity started to blink out all over the Eastern grid, plunging millions into medieval darkness.

Need I really remind you that your writer is the guy who ran out of gas more than Richard Petty did during his entire auto racing career?

Need I really remind you that your writer is the guy who tried to remove a refrigerator from the basement, a refrigerator which had not worked for about a decade, rupturing the freon line, bringing most of the police and fire forces in. the city to the scene?

So, Dave and Mick started dismantling the scooter to get to the motor. I admit that I know absolutely nothing about engines, having forgotten what I had learned in my 5th grade science class. That lawnmower engine that I had to take apart and put together for a solid week after school as punishment for something I did not do was a Made in America lawnmower engine. This scooter motor was a Chinese re-invention of an engine, not that it made a big difference to me.

Dave, as he always has done over the years, recognizes my limitations, but lets me make believe that I am really and truly helping him by allowing me to hand him a tool here and unscrew a non-critical screw there or wipe up some oil drips on the driveway or go inside to ask Sue to order dinner for us. Mick was right in there, removing little hoses and taking metal pieces off of the motor and discussing carburetors and fuel shut-off valves and mixtures, just like these things really existed and he knew what he was talking about. Mick and Dave, two engineers, who also had a common bond because both had been in the military, working in secret three letter agencies, were using code words and magic.

We broke for dinner, Dave pointing out that it might be better to take it somewhere to get it fixed; and Stacey, who came along to visit with her adult-lifelong friend, Sue, said something in jest that changed the whole tenor of the evening, "Dave, I'm disillusioned. I thought you could fix anything."

The gauntlet had been thrown. We returned to the task of getting the motor scooter going. Darkness fell; I unwound the cord of the work light and held the light so as to illuminate the work area. This, as it were, was beyond my capability. Dave grabbed the light, "You're going to catch us all on fire." He told Mick to remove something or other -- it was a foreign language to me, Chinese, maybe. I had become superfluous, or I had been so all along. Now, I had turned into a liability. And I knew my place.

I went into the house to sit down with Sue and Stacey, both of whom raised their eyebrows, wondering what was happening. "He won't even let me hold the light. Too dangerous," I said. They guffawed.

At ten, Stacey and Sue decided that it was time to pack it in for the night and that the adventure could play out at a later date. Mick wanted to return to help out; Dave wanted him to come back. So, we called it an evening, Dave giving me instructions on what parts to order.

At ten minutes to three this morning, the phone rang, one of those phone calls that could only mean that someone died or someone was in jail. It meant only trouble. "I got it running," Dave said. "After five fucking hours, I got it running."

"You're kidding," I said. "You are amazing, man."

"I thought you would want to know." He hung up.

E. R. STORY BY STACEY

i fell thursday night. i ALMOST fall a lot. i say "going down," and between me and bill, my "boys," or whoever i'm with, i'm usually restored to balance. but on thursday, sheba would not cooperate and got in my and bill's way. i fell flat on my face, arms outstretched in front of me, into the open tv and entertainment armoir. laid there on the floor for about half an hour, crying like a little girl, hoping that the pain in my left shoulder was temporary. not. broken bone in my shoulder. hurts like a fricking son of a bitch.

i can finally feel today that it's improving. no cast for the shoulder -- just a sling. as paul harvey says, "and now. you know. the REST. of the story."

E.R.

It's 2:30 in the morning. Eastern Time. I'm sitting in the E.R. It's fairly quiet. The doors to the outside world, rather cool tonight, whirr open and close, the security guard checking out the area every so often, grabbing a quick smoke, I imagine, just like some of the guys in high school.

An older, brown-suspendered gentleman, carrying his companion's purse, wheeled her in. Congestive heart failure, I guessed. Short, shallow breaths from the green oxygen tank, legs swollen way past mid-summer watermelon girth, and they whisked her away from her gentleman into the back, telling him to have a seat.

And he did, sitting too near to the father wearing a red and blue baseball cap with the 12-year-old, slightly chubby, groaning, curly-haired boy wearing a green pull-over, short-sleeved knit shirt with narrow yellow stripes. Too near, I say, because I moved to the children's waiting area, Winnie-the-Pooh open-mouthed on the cover of a book called "Christmas Days" across the blue all-weather carpet from me among a number of Fisher Price and toys and books stacked haphazardly in equi-sided cubicles.

I moved over here because of the fucking little brat's incessant moaning, holding his abdomen, getting up and sitting down, walking to the snack machine to check out the offerings. Little bastard. It’s two fucking thirty.

I ducked into the men's bathroom, something I hate to do in hospitals. The germs, you know, they cause infections and shit. But I needed to just get away from little fucker’s annoying moaning and plaintives to everyone that it hurt, including the 30-ish, lanky, blond-haired guy with a right eye that hadn’t seen the left hook coming, who sat at the far side of the waiting area. I knew that he could, even with one good eye, take the fucking bastard kid -- and the tanned girl with plaited, blonde hair, braces on her teeth, panther tattoo on her calf, agreed with me, catching my eye with a sneer, as did the older bleached-blond with smoker's sun-damaged skin sitting next to her. She had the used-up look of someone who had joined in once the beating had started in several mid-western biker bars.

The chubby little fucker brought his sick act into the god-damned bathroom. It was certainly possible that he could trip and end up with his head in the toilet. Yeah, that's the ticket. It would look like an accident. If only old left eye would stroll in, he would make a good witness. Hell, he would tell me to turn around and then do the deed himself; then he'd tell me to "Get security, Pops," which would annoy me even further. And I might get security or I might give him an overhand right to the other eye.

It was good left eye didn't join us in the bathroom. And I walked out, leaving the corpulent bastard to piss and moan. Little fucker. I expected him to follow me out. He did – without washing his hands – and he stood in front of the snack machine, mesmerized by the spiral wires, which could carry all kinds of goodies to his grubby, little hands, if only he had the money.

The nurse called out a name. The little bastard’s name, apparently, because he and his father, who removed his baseball cap, followed the nurse and disappeared, never to re-appear in my world.

Science Fiction

Some scientists decided that it would be a good idea to look for life outside of our normal reference point -- someone who looks or acts like us -- and search for other kinds of life as we don't know it. I didn't order the slim book the group authored. It is no longer than Old Man and the Sea, but the price per page is a lot more; so, I'll leave it to others who are more gullible to buy it.

I just wonder why they wrote the book. A local TV station used to show old Flash Gordon episodes that were made in the 1930's or '40's or '50's, when the world was black-and-white. Buster Crabbe played Flash Gordon. And he encountered the Rock People, as I recall. And I think he met some Sand People.

Mr. Spock mind-melded and made friends with a Horta, which Dr. McCoy patched up with cement, in Star Trek. There were any number of non-carbon-based life forms described and encountered in the Star Trek series, along with a variety of colorful humanoids, all of whom Captain Kirk bedded at one time or another after tearing his shirt.

So, what took these scientists so long to figure out that maybe there are other things out there that might be alive, but not as we know it?

Yo, scientists -- look to science fiction! The truth is always far stranger.

Bad Golf

Sometimes, bad golf takes over; and everyone in the group with which I played last Saturday, in this case, two threesomes (which adds up to six for the uninitiated), did not play well.

As an aside, I wonder why golf announcers, who pretend they are journalists and, therefore, should have a more-than-tenuous grasp on the English language, whisper, "Oh, he hit that one good," or "She is not scoring as good as she should be." Doesn't a producer whisper in the earpiece, as Don Pardo did on the game show, Password, "The password is 'well.'"

And while I am on the subject of watching golf on television, I may as well defend it. There is a "sport" a tad more of a bore than golf -- it could be going around and around the track racing autos, but it's not because there's a chance of a fiery crash or a bumping, sideswiping photo finish, the drivers getting into a fight just like hockey. No, it's not auto racing on oval tracks.

Poker.

I noticed that all the players wear sunglasses and presidents' masks, so that nobody can figure out what pupillary responses and facial tics might be important. At the very least, they should give the six-shooters back to the players, then there will be a chance one of the players will go berserk and start blasting away. But as it is played now, I consider it the most boring thing on television. It probably cures late-night insomnia. And it is on just about every channel of the cable TV spectrum at some time during the day, saturating the airwaves with poker 24 hours a day every day of the week. Of course, it's likely that I am all wrong about poker on TV; and, as I write this, there are people crowded around a TV in Gomer, Ohio, cheering on their favorite, screaming for him to hold ... or shoot the fucker on the other side of the table.

It was sunny on Saturday morning, and I stood on the teeing ground of the fourth hole. A creek cuts across the fairway -- it's a little creek at the bottom of a fifty foot ravine -- anyway, it crosses the fairway. You don't need to really know how far from the teeing area that creek is located unless you really want to embarrass me. I never had occasion to measure how close it is to the tee because it's right there, not very far; but that's where my first shot landed. So, I teed up another one rather than take a few steps to the end of the teeing area and hit from there.

An intersecting creek meanders along the left side of the fourth hole. I won't say that it is along the left side of the fairway because it's way, way off to the left in terms of golf distance. So, I hooked one into that chasm. Now, the tee shot was supposed to be a lay-up shot with a 4-iron of about 210 or 220 yards before pounding one over the lake, then hitting a short shot to the two-tiered slightly elevated green, which is tucked away in a copse of trees. I found my ball, but I did not want to kill myself or get poison ivy by trying to retrieve it from the creek bed below. The Titleist executives like that -- more golf ball sales.

Before finding my ball, I had walked down the expanse of short-cropped, green fairway grass with the other two golfers in my threesome. That isn't an entirely accurate description, however. They walked over that way to the right about forty yards away. I got the impression that they were afraid to be near me at that point, leaving me to stroll along, heading through the longer, browning grass of the rough toward the creek. I wasn't muttering to myself or throwing clubs. I was wondering what the hell was happening on such a beautiful morning and figuring that I might be able to get a seven on the hole if I hit a left-bending, 3-metal shot over the lake, a short pitch to the green with one putt. Or an eight, if I needed two putts. I'd be happy with an eight.

My golf friends didn't know what I was thinking; otherwise, they might have decided to walk with me, instead of letting me walk alone, carrying my Peter Jacobsen model retro leather golf bag that I got about ten years ago. When I saw my ball at the bottom of the creek bed, I dropped my bag to the ground and unzipped the pocket that held my stock of golf balls. Four.

I have known golfers, my father among that number, who have big, huge professional-style golf bags with 38 pockets. They carry a couple dozen or more golf balls. I could never figure out why they did that. How many golf balls does one need for a Saturday morning stroll on a golf course? With the four Titleist golf balls in that pocket of my bag were a couple of other items, a small leather bag with some golf tees and a couple ball mark repair thingys, into which I put my wallet, my keys, and my cell phone, and a stick of Water Babies sunscreen (It's 30 pdf or whatever letters they use to denote whatever it is that they think is important -- and whether or not it works, I do put it on before starting to play.). There's a spike wrench with a red handle and a blue permanent marker, which is to put a mark on my golf balls so that I know which is mine. There's another pocket -- in that one, I keep a baseball cap; and I was wearing that.

So, I dropped a brand new ball -- not in accordance with the Rules of Golf. I just kind of threw it down, not like I was angry, just exasperated, but determined to get my seven or eight. Mind over matter. Good attitude. Golf psychology.

Aaaah, that's a bunch of bullshit; don't believe it. I hit the 3-metal about a mile in the air and none too far. "Not gonna make it, Billy," Greg pointed out to me, as the new ball splashed into the lake. I knew that when I hit it, and no sudden gust of wind or force of my will could change the course of that Titleist (with one blue dot on each side of the black "4" underneath the script "Titleist" on the ball); and the next one I hit wasn't dead solid, but I struck it well enough to clear the lake.

So, there I stood in the middle of the fairway, wondering why I woke up so early in the morning to walk the dogs and then drive out here. I felt as though I was playing with Dick Cheney -- torture. I pulled my pitching wedge from my bag and, after going through all the wiggle-waggles and lining-up shit that is supposed to help, according to all the golf experts, I hit a high, arching shot off to the right a little that hit the downslope of the elevated part of the green and bounced farther to the right into high grass.

I hacked at the ball, and it rolled past the hole, picking up speed at a rate that breached all laws of Physics, and finally stopped when it reached higher grass off of the other side of the green. In former days, I might have thrown a club and most certainly would have used the word "fuck" in all its variations; but I, because I have matured, you see, used the word only two or three times in rather benign combinations. And realizing that I had totally fucked up my score for the entire round, I stepped up to my fucking ball and, without all of the machinations that are recommended by golf experts planet-wide, chipped it up to about three inches left of the flagstick. And Greg hit the ball back to me, giving me the putt, for an 11.

11.

But it was a beautiful morning for a quiet walk out of doors with a few friends. And in the middle of January, I will yearn to play bad golf.

txt msg frm a strngr

Inbox: What are we doing today? call me samantha

Sent item: i asked my wife if we had plans with you and she didn't think so. we're having some friends over to eat and watch fireworks from the rooftop deck. sorry. bill